Thank you to all of our supporters who donated to The Garden Fund this year! The Garden Fund for 2013-14 is almost over for the fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2014. To have your name listed on our Garden Fund Honor Roll in "Garden Variety", please inform the Development Office of your gift by June 30, 2014.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden has enjoyed an outpouring of generosity that will make a real difference in every aspect of the RSABG experience, from educational opportunities for young people to support for the maintenance and growth of our Claremont and West Los Angeles nursery sites.

Participation in The Garden Fund is vital to the success of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden’s mission. With your continued support, we look forward to preserving, protecting and propagating California native plants for their natural beauty and for the well-being of our planet.

Veteran Training Program

The West Los Angeles nursery enables Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden to help train veterans on the propagation, care and maintenance of California native plants and offer beautiful native plants to L.A. gardeners.The 12-acre garden and nursery, located on the grounds of the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System (VAGLAHS) was established in 1989 as part of the VA’s Horticulture Therapy Program, a work therapy program to assist veterans making the transition back to civilian employment.

Grow Native Nursery in the Veterans Garden staff collaborates with the VAGLAHS to train veterans on the propagation, care and maintenance of California native plants and offers nursery sales to the public. The site has historically been known as the Veterans Garden and has served veterans over the years through a variety of projects such as growing micro-greens for local restaurants and cut flowers for local florists.

Working with the VA’s Compensated Work Therapy Program (CWT), Grow Native Nursery offers a new focus on native flora of the state as well as sustainable landscaping and gardening practices. Vets completing the program will have a competitive edge in the job market as they compete for green and environmental jobs.

The nursery expands RSABG outreach to make California native plants more available to home gardeners, landscape contractors in the San Fernando Valley and the coastal cities. It also enables us to be able to propagate native plants that thrive in coastal conditions.

The Seeds of Success (SOS) team at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden has been responsible for greatly expanding international seed bank holdings from the Mojave and Sonoran deserts.

A recent expedition to a collection site on the Pacific Crest Trail is rewarded with a copious yield of the shrub saltbrush (Atriplex canescens). The four-wing saltbrush codominates desert plant communities in Southern California and is a food source for the desert tortoise. The saltbrush seed collection will ultimately help build an ample national and international seed bank to maintain and restore resilient native plant communities after environmental damage such as fire or urban development.

The newest issue of RSABG’s scientific publication Aliso: A Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany was published April 2014.

Past Issues

Aliso Volume 30 issue (September 2012) features peer-reviewed articles authored by graduates of the botany program (Victor Steinmann, Ph.D. (CGU Class of 2001), director of the Instituto de Ecología in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico, wrote about Euphorbia, and an article on monkeyflowers (formerly Mimulus, now Erythranthe) from Naomi Fraga, M.S. (CGU Class of 2005) and CGU Ph.D. candidate, and a RSABG conservation botanist.

Fraga N.S. 2012. A Revision of Erythranthe montioides and Erythranthe palmeri (Phrymaceae), with descriptions of five species of monkeyflowers from California and Nevada, USA. Aliso 30: 49-68. Read more.

Other articles contributed by RSABG research associates include: Jim André, director of the Granite Mountains Desert Research Center, University of California, Riverside, Kelso, CA, and Rudolf Schmid, professor emeritus, Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley (coauthored with his daughter Mena Schmid). Sherwin Carlquist, professor emeritus of botany, Claremont Graduate University and Pomona College, presents new findings on wood anatomy.

A Real Page Turner

We will be celebrating special occasions or visits of honored guests with the ceremonial page turning of great books such as Redouté’s Les Roses.

Visitors can come into the library to see the current selection of prized rare book holdings. Please inquire at the California Garden Shop next time you visit the Garden to see a sample of special volumes in the RSABG collection and the informative display created by RSABG staff and volunteers.

Introducing PlantQuest

Keeping traditional landscapes healthy in Southern California uses up to 70 percent of our potable water, requires gross amounts of pesticides and fertilizers, and produces countless emissions from maintenance equipment and contributes to some of the planet’s worst air quality. But there is a better way! By choosing the right plants for the right place, we can create truly sustainable landscapes—landscapes that thrive on little or no supplemental water and little, if any, fertilizers or pesticides. Best yet, sustainable landscapes rarely need to be hedged, edged or mowed and that saves us all both time and money.

In September 2012, Professor Lucinda McDade, Judith B. Friend Director of Research at RSABG (and as of July 2013, Executive Director), received a supplement of approximately $50,000 to the current RSABG grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to digitize and georeference data from about a quarter of a million herbarium specimens of California plants.

The supplement will support the full participation of the herbaria of UCLA and California State University, Sacramento, in the NSF-supported project and in the California Consortium of Herbaria (CCH). The consortium is a collaboration of 22 California herbaria as well as the New York Botanical Garden and Harvard University Herbaria. It acts as a gateway to information for scientifically verified, vouchered information about California plants. The grant supplement will support databasing of about 30,000 specimens held at these two herbaria. The records will be available online to plant scientists from around the world, as well as to the public, via the CCH’s website.

New graduates students join botany cohort with Fall 2012 semester and one student completes her Ph.D.

This fall semester, which began September 4, members of the graduate program welcomed four new students to the Claremont Graduate University Department of Botany at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. Congratulations to Saeideh Mashayekhi, the newest CGU alumna in botany.

The RSABG Library regularly acquires new resources that compliment and enhance the collection. Whether we purchase material, receive gifts, donations or exchange with other botanical institutions, the RSABG collections continue to grow.

The public is welcome to visit the library to use the collections and many reference materials. Please contact Irene Holiman, either by email iholiman@rsabg.org or phone, (909) 625-8767 ext. 210, for more information or to make an appointment to use the collection.

California’s rich plant life has captured the imagination of horticulturists, scientists and artists for more than a century.

A collaborative project of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants, When They Were Wild interprets the unique diversity of the California flora from its origins to its current popularity.

This diversity has been depicted by talented artists who were also amateur naturalists, including Alice Brown Chittenden, Clara Mason Fox and James Milford Zornes. Illustrations by these and other artists, complemented by herbarium collections (museum specimens of dried plants), publications and ephemera, depict an era when many of these species passed from growing wild into domestication.

Some 200 items in the exhibition from the three collaborating institutions and from a number of other public and private collections tell the story of the iconic beauty of California plants and share the botanical, ecological and horticultural nature of native flowers.

Over the past three years, I have gathered and cataloged RSABG’s holdings that will be part of the exhibit and/or part of the extensive online resources for the exhibit. Irene Holiman, RSABG’s library specialist, and two Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Interns, Jessica Torres in 2012 and Jessica Dewberry in 2010, have been immensely helpful. Torres and Dewberry were indispensable in researching and writing up the artists’ biographies as well as scanning a wide array of paintings and documents.

The exhibit will be organized around several themes: a brief introduction to the biological setting of California; the discovery, describing, cataloging and depiction of California wildflowers; the science and horticulture of California wildflowers and a gallery featuring dozens of images that we’ve nicknamed “the garden.”

Many of these artists portrayed dozens to hundreds of California wildflowers. These works illustrate remarkable stories of beautiful plants. These stories are the stuff of legends; they meld scientific discovery and horticulture.

On display will be RSABG’s first edition copy of the original published image of the first California native plant to flower in cultivation in Europe: beach sand verbena (Abronia umbellata). This California wildflower was described and published by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1791 in his landmark 21-volume treatise, Tableau Encyclopedique et Methodique des Trois Regnes de la Nature.

As with many early images of California’s flora, this one has quite a backstory. The seeds of the plant were collected in Monterey in September of 1786, by Jean-Nicholas Collignon of the La Pérouse Expedition. This French expedition’s two ships, L’Astrolabe and La Boussole, carried the first non-Spanish European explorers to reach California’s shores since Sir Francis Drake’s landing in 1579. From California, the expedition crossed the Pacific and landed in Macao, and then traveled north until they reached Petropavlovsk on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on September 7, 1787.

The expedition departed from Petropavlovsk on September 30, 1787, but left Jean Baptiste Barthélemy de Lesseps to carry the expedition’s materials overland in order to report to the French Ambassador in St. Petersburg.

It took de Lesseps an entire year to reach St. Petersburg. From there, he traveled to Paris arriving on October 17, 1788. The La Pérouse Expedition was subsequently lost and was never seen again, leaving de Lesseps the only survivor.

Interestingly, the botanist Jean Baptiste Lamarck writes that the beach sand verbena had been growing in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris since 1788. In my research, I have not been able to ascertain whether the seeds were sown and germinated in 1788 (highly likely) or whether they were blooming in 1788 (highly unlikely, given the time frame). In any event, it is clear that this sand verbena is the first known California native plant to be grown from seed to flowering in Europe.

Abby Hird, Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) U.S. research associate and project manager, has set up a new office at RSABG. She recently moved from Boston, where she was hosted by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University for the past three years. Andrea Kramer, BGCI U.S. executive director, said, "BGCI and its global network will no doubt benefit from the closer connection to Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and we are grateful for their dedicated support as members of BGCI."

Hird is looking forward to working with RSABG staff and researchers and being activitly involved with the organization's world-class conservation programs. For 2013, she is continuing to continue developing BGCI's data services, and other major BGCI U.S. efforts such as the Care for the Rare interpretation project (read more about Care for the Rare here), carried out in collaboration with the United States Botanic Garden.

Beautiful California Wildflowers!

March 9 – July 8, 2013 (both Where They Grow Wild and When They Were Wild have been extended!)Gallery open: Friday – Sunday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m Opening reception: Saturday, March 9, 11 a.m.

"Where They Grow Wild" is an exclusive display of original artworks from RSABG’s archival collections complementing the “When They Were Wild” collaborative exhibition with The Huntington, Theodore Payne Foundation and Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden.

Join us at the opening reception for complimentary light refreshments, guided tours of the RSABG library's "Wild in Print" collection and guided tours of the "Where They Grow Wild" exhibit at RSABG.

Related events at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif.

March 9 – July 8, 2013“When They Were Wild: Recapturing California’s Wildflower Heritage” at The Huntington Free with RSABG membership. A collaborative project of The Huntington, Theodore Payne Foundation and Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. Special Membership Benefit-RSABG members may visit The Huntington at no charge through the duration of this special exhibition with a valid RSABG membership card.

Friday, March 8, 1 - 4 p.m.RSABG Members Exhibition Preview RSABG members can join The Huntington members in special exhibition preview at the Boone Gallery of the "When They Were Wild." Free admission to The Huntington.

Fri., March 8, 6 - 8 p.m. Gold Card Member Exhibition Preview RSABG Gold Card members are invited to join The Huntington donors for an exhibition preview and reception. This is an exclusive event for RSABG Gold Card members, reservation are required. Email development@rsabg.org for more information.

Sun., March 17, 5 - 9 p.m. When They Were Wild Director’s Circle Dinner and Exhibition Tour Dinner and behind-the-scenes tour of the “When They Were Wild” art exhibit with Bart O'Brien, co-curator. By invitation only. Email development@rsabg.org for more information.

March 30, 31 and April 1, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.Wildflower ShowFree with Garden admission or membership. Free admission for visitors over 65 on Monday, April 1.Special exhibition of wildflowers from across the region brought indoors for an intimate viewing. Monday, April 1, Wildflower Show Senior Day - free Garden admission and tram tours on April 1 for visitors over 65.

Sun., April 7, 8 a.m. - 6 p.m.Blooms and Beauty of Bighorn MountainRSABG members $65, public $95 This outing will highlight a rare transition zone between the local mountains and the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. This outing has reached enrollment capacity. Please look for similar events in the future.

Saturday, April 20, 1 p.m. Lorraine Passero: “Clara Mason Fox: Pioneer, Painter, and Poet of Orange County, California” California Author Series Talk and Book Signing Free with Garden admission or membership. Lorraine Passero delves into the life of Clara Mason Fox, whose illustration “Eschscholzia californica, Silverado Canyon,” was selected to represent the “When They Were Wild” exhibition. Register online here.

Several years ago Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG) teamed up with the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) through a contract grant from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Department of Fish and Wildlife to do rare plant surveys across California deserts as part of the Rare Plant Treasure Hunt (RPTH) program. Last year marked the third year for RPTH, a program created and named by Josie Crowford of CNPS.

It is largely a citizen-science program with the goal of getting volunteers out in the field to experience California wild places and assist in rare plant surveys. These surveys largely target rare plant populations that haven’t been revisited in more than 20 years in order to evaluate the current status of these populations.

Many people may be under the impression that the desert is nothing rocks, lizards and an occasional spiny plant—an open wasteland to be crossed to get to Las Vegas or Lake Havasu. But California deserts hold more than 35 percent of the flora of California and have some of the areas of highest diversity for the state. There are many botanically unexplored mountain ranges and valleys out there. In 2012 alone, there were five plant species found in California deserts new to science described by RSABG scientists and researchers.

The Rare Plant Treasure Hunt program largely focuses on the California deserts often associated with the development of renewable energy projects. There are currently thousands of acres proposed for possible development, of which a great deal has had little botanical exploration.

It is the goal of the RPTH program to get volunteers out to these places to experience them first hand and to educate others on California’s diverse flora and the importance of its conservation.

Volunteers from the Sierra Club, the Desert Survivors Organizations, HabitatWorks, The Wildlands Conservancy, CNPS chapters and subchapters from across California have often participated with Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in the Rare Plant Treasure Hunt. But many volunteers were not affiliated with any particular organization, but were just interested in joining the group to explore and learn about the desert and to have a personal experience with these wild places while doing so.

The spring field season in 2012 was one of the driest years on record for the California deserts; most areas got only 0.01 millimeters of rain or absolutely no rain at all. Watching the doppler in the winter of 2011-12 was often like watching a blank screen as there was so little weather action. Watching the weather stations and dopplers frequently helps plant scientists predict which areas may have germination or bloom. But even in dry years, the desert rarely disappoints and almost every area visited had at least one rare plant population if not dozens.

The summer field season seemed to the opposite as some parts of the California deserts received the most summer rain they have received in more than a decade. The eastern Mojave in particular had an amazing summer bloom and RSABG/RPTH participants were able to document around 100 rare plant populations on just a few trips.

A total of 24 trips were made in 2012. These trips ranged from day trips to three-day excursions into very remote places. We started in March at below sea level around the Salton Sea, topped out on Southern California’s highest peak on Mount San Gorgonio at 11,500 feet in July, and then headed back down to the lower elevations following the summer monsoonal storms in September. We documented around 300 rare plant populations. Many of these were newly documented. We trekked into the Panamint Mountains and found the type locality of the Panamint daisy (Enceliopsis covillei), which is the plant that has always adorned, and will continue to adorn, the CNPS logo; this population had not been revisited since Frederick Coville made the first collection of this plant in 1891 on the Death Valley expedition. The new species was later named for him. We found the first population of Abrams spurge (Chamaesyce abramsiana) in Imperial County in 100 years; all historic populations from Imperial County are likely extirpated due to development and agriculture. We documented many range extensions of rare plants, locating populations where they had never been found before. We provided information that aided in the evaluation of plant species for the CNPS inventory, including information about its abundance (or lack thereof!) in California and about threats to historic occurrences of a given species. We had many wonderful treks into some amazing places and spent many nights under star filled skies. All in all, it was a very successful and productive year.

These results were recorded during Family Bird Fest on Feb. 17, 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden volunteers, staff and visitors and Pomona Valley Audubon Society members helped gather the data. More information about the Great Backyard Bird Count can be found here.

Jeffery Morawetz, RSABG postdoctoral fellow, recently returned from a trip to Africa. He offers us this glimpse into his travels and research findings.

I recently returned from a month-long field trip to Katanga Province in the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which was funded by my National Geographic Society grant. My colleague on my National Science Foundation grant, Christopher Randle (Sam Houston State University), came with me. We met up with our colleague Edouard Ilunga (Ph.D. student, University of Lubumbashi), and he accompanied us for the entire time. We had many adventures together, and traveled widely throughout southern Katanga, from the frontier town of Dilolo in the west (bordering Angola) to Kundelungu National Park in the east (which boasts Africa’s tallest waterfall, Lofoi falls, at 347 meters). Most areas where we worked were either damp to inundated grasslands (called dambos, or dilungus), or miombo woodland, which is dominated by species of the legume tree Brachystegia (a common habitat type found in southern Africa).

Our goal was to collect the rare and endemic parasitic members of the family Orobanchaceae, and we were quite successful. We found the monotypic (meaning it is a genus with only a single species) Micrargeriella aphylla, and in a locality where it was not previously known (Kundelungu National Park). We also collected Gerardiina angolensis, which I’ve been hunting in eastern and southern Africa for years (unsuccessfully until now). Additionally, we collected two Central African endemic species of Melasma, a genus I studied for my dissertation (M. brevipedicellatum, M calycinum). I didn’t believe that one of the species really existed, as its description is not very different from its close relative, but sure enough, when we found them in the field, they are quite distinct. And they were very striking with their bright orange flowers, something only rarely mentioned in the literature. We were also able to collect species of the genera Buchnera, Sopubia and Striga.

In addition to all the great plants, we also ate some really great food called mbuzi michopo (roasted goat). It’s similar to the mbuzi choma of East Africa, but often cooked with onions and chopped kwanga (manioc/cassava). The starchy staple in Katanga is corn-based and called foufou (similar to ugali of East Africa, or nshima of Zambia), though it is different from the West African foufou typically made of cassava.

Most everyone in Congo speaks the national language, French (a hold-over from the Belgian colonial period). In Katanga, people also speak the regional language, Swahili. I was surprised to find that Congolese Swahili is quite different from East African Swahili. Notably, there is much French (and other Congolese regional languages, such as Lingala) woven in, and some word usage and pronunciation has been changed. While I could understand their Swahili, many Congolese had difficulty understanding my East African Swahili.

I will be going back to work with Edouard again in March. I look forward to more plant hunting in such a wonderful country and eating more mbuzi michopo.

Lucinda McDade, Judith B. Friend Director of Research at RSABG and chair of the Claremont Graduate University Department of Botany, was a featured speaker at Biodiversity: from Evolutionary Origins to Ecosystems Function. The bicentennial symposium held in October 2012 celebrated the 200th anniversary of research at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

McDade spoke about the unanticipated uses of museum specimens (including plant specimens). From use of the Lewis and Clark plants to document the chemistry of the atmosphere above the Great Plains in the early 1800s to use of olive leaves in a funerary wreath from King Tut’s tomb along with more recently collected herbarium specimens to document the response of plants to changing carbon dioxide levels, McDade conveyed the message that museum specimens are rich sources of data that will be relied upon to address scientific and societal questions in the future.

In 2011, a panel from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources visited Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden as part of a state-wide research trip for the Center for Plant Conservation’s publication Dancing with Extinction, a special edition of Plant Conservation, the newsletter of Center for Plant Conservation (CPC).

California is the nation’s second top hotspot for critically imperiled plant diversity (only Hawaii has a more endangered flora). As a charter member of CPC and a major player in the conservation of California plants, RSABG’s efforts to document and preserve the remarkable flora of California were highlighted in Dancing with Extinction.

Dudleya is a large genus of about 40 species, many of which are native to California and northern Mexico. Only a handful are common in cultivation and many are on the endangered species list.

At one time Dudleyas were included in the Echecveria genus, which includes the popular garden plant Echeveria ‘Imbricata’ (Hen and Chicks). Like Echeveria, Dudleyas are rosette-forming succulents and are generally silvery green.

However there are distinctions in their flowers. Dudlyea flowers arise near the bottom of the rosettes instead of the center of the rosettes. Most Dudleyas flower in late winter to early spring and the colors range from white and yellow to bright red.

Dudleyas earn their common name of live forever—many living up to 100 years with proper care. They have a wide range, but are typically found in rock outcroppings, cliff faces or steep slopes. Dudleya should be planted at an angle to allow accumulated water to drain from the center of the plant and prevent microbial decay. They are will adapted to the Southern California wet winters and dry summers. Avoid water in the summer. They do well in pots.

This genus is named for William Russell Dudley (1849 - 1911). After Dudley moved to California to accept a position as professor of systematic botany at Stanford University, his research and publishing focused on the diverse flora of California. The study of trees, the evolutionary relations of forms and the problems of geographical distribution were central to his research. Dudley's passion for conifers prompted his involvement in many conservation initiatives for the coast redwood and giant sequoia.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden offers its nature interpreters an infinite variety of constant and ever-changing surprise experiences: like seeing and hearing the loud call of a belted kingfisher perched on a tree at Benjamin Pond, or catching sight of a stunning rust color blossom on a spice bush, or observing a monarch butterfly emerge from its chrysalis.

Miracles similar to these are an everyday occurrence in the Garden. They inspire further study as well as sharing with other volunteers and Garden visitors.

Continuing education is a significant part of the nature interpreter's experience: classes, field trips, event orientations, enrichments, self-study, refreshers, ad infinitum. Joy of learning and friendships that evolve from sharing common interests are enhanced by the energetic, inquisitive children who attend our tours.

At a recent refresher walk, our group stopped to observe a sugar bush. Dick Angus recalled my practice tour nine years ago. You may be able to empathize with my first tour anxiety. I identified the sugar bush as a western redbud. No one said a word; we went on. The next tree was a REAL western redbud with heart shaped leaves and rosy pink blossoms. We all laughed! In that moment, Irv Goldhammer, my mentor, gave me an unforgettable learning tool: patience towards self and others.

What keeps me coming back to RSABG? It is all of the above, plus the uniqueness of each child and adult. On a tour with first graders not long ago, all of us were standing under a California sycamore tree examining its leaves. Then I said," Let's look at the trunk". A little boy, without skipping a beat, asked, "Where is the elephant?"

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden has come one step closer to its goal of raising $1 million in annual fund donations this year through The Garden Fund, the non-profit’s 2011-12 fundraising campaign. The non-profit organization is celebrating the completion of a $75,000 matching grant which tripled donors’ contributions to The Garden Fund.

The privately-funded, nonprofit organization is searching for volunteers to help with gardening, leading tours and serving as information assistants. RSABG will offer orientation course for new volunteers beginning in September 2012. For more information and to download a volunteer application, visit our volunteer webpages, or contact Tiffany Chandler, RSABG manager of volunteer programs at (909) 625-8767, ext. 256 or tchandler@rsabg.org.

There are two New Volunteer Orientation, “RSABG 101,” sessions to choose from. Prospective volunteers can choose from two, two-day sessions: Fridays, September 21 and October 5, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., or Saturdays, September 29 and October 13, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Enrollment in the volunteer orientation course requires an interview with the volunteer manager.

Autumn is the best time to plant California native perennials, shrubs, bulbs and wildflower seeds.

Since native plants have spent generations adapting to local growing conditions, they are great additions to home landscapes—and one that can save you time and resources. Native plants are rarely invasive. They support local wildlife—birds and butterflies depend on them for food shelter and nesting. And most of all they are beautiful.

Undergraduate students have come to Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden for a plant systematics and evolutionary biology workshop August 11 through 21, 2012.

The workshop offers students a hands-on plant science learning opportunity—from collecting and making plant specimens to DNA extraction to working with the scanning electron microscope to analyzing the data that result from such a project.

Students have come from colleges and universities in Indiana, Arkansas, Texas and Southern California, as well as international students from Namibia and Venezuela. Professors Lucinda McDade and J. Mark Porter are leading the workshops and Kristen Hasenstab-Lehman, CGU doctoral candidate, is serving as the teaching assistant.

The intensive 10-day workshop will focus on the types of research questions and methods used in reconstructing evolutionary relationships in plants. Topics to be covered include: DNA extraction and sequencing methods, scanning electron microscopy, anatomy and morphology, field collection techniques and herbarium curation. Participants will learn to use Internet tools (e.g., GenBank) and software packages to gather, process and analyze phylogenetic data.

The workshop is made possible through funding provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) has ranked Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden’s oak collection as 28th largest collection of rare or endangered oaks in the world.

The survey identified 3,796 oak records from 198 institutions in 39 countries. RSABG’s collection of oaks was deemed a significant botanic garden collection by assigning a score for each taxa within the garden’s collection and the number of unique or rare collections.

Read more about BGCI’s global survey of ex situ oak collections at their website.

The intention of “Processing Seeds of California Native Plants for Conservation, Storage, and Restoration,” by Michael Wall and John Macdonald might be encapsulated with the well-placed quote in the manual’s brief preface.

The editors selected an excerpt from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s 1961 “Seeds, The Yearbook of Agriculture,” that concludes with an apt description of the humble seed’s purpose—“Seeds are containers of embryonic plants, the embryos of a new generation.”

American Horticultural Society’s National Children and Youth Garden Symposium “The Vitality of Gardens: Energizing the Learning Environment.” The three-day event will be held in the heart of downtown Pasadena at The Westin Pasadena on Thursday, July 22 through Saturday, July 24, 2010.

]]>pnash@rsabg.org (Pauline Amell-Nash)NewsThu, 15 Jul 2010 20:40:17 -0700Claremont High School students show off research at RSABGhttp://rsabg.org/garden-news1/409-chs-press-release
http://rsabg.org/garden-news1/409-chs-press-release

Claremont High School students dove into fieldwork at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden this year. Now the group of 40 juniors and seniors in Carly McKean’s International Baccalaureate Environmental Systems and Societies classes are planning a celebration highlighting their research at the Garden on Friday, June 4, 2010, at 3:15 p.m. at the Garden.

The students’ research involved monitoring chaparral and dessert habitats at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. McKean asked the students to create experiments that involved two ecological tools that allow scientists to measure the abundance of organisms in an area. Projects included transect and quadrat studies to monitor the impact of introduced weed species on native plant biodiversity. The students will report on their findings to date. This is the beginning of a long-term study that will be continued in years to come by McKean’s students.

“Outdoor field studies is especially suited to engage students in science,” says Director of Education Lorrae Fuentes at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. “Observations made in the field stimulate students to produce their own questions. The results of these inquiries are often unexpected, but rarely are they uninteresting. Ultimately students gain skills and understanding needed to critically evaluate the important current issues in science and the environment.”

April 22, 2010 marks the 40th anniversary for Earth Day. Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden is celebrating Earth Day by offering Southern California gardeners 10 simple tips to help make green thumbs even greener. By using California native plants, local gardeners can reduce water bills, spruce up their garden and invest in their local environment.

“Native plantings in the landscape work with our hot dry climate without requiring a large input of resources in the way of water, pesticides or fertilizers,” says Director of Horticulture Susan Jett at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. “But the real selling point is their incredible beauty and habitat value.”

According to The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California typical landscape irrigation in hot, dry areas can account for 70 percent of the summer water use for single-family homes. These 10 steps can help reduce water usage in the garden.

The Garden was named LA Weekly’s “Best Place to Grow your Own” in the publication’s “Best of L.A. 2010” edition. The private, non-profit botanic garden is dedicated exclusively to California’s native plants. Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG) also operates two native plant nurseries, one in Claremont and a second in Westwood, Los Angeles.

Jedd Birkner wrote in LA Weekly “See what would actually be growing here without watering before we arrived and started pouring asphalt and laying down PVC. Then go to the adjacent Grow Native Nursery. Buy it. Plant it. Save water. Save L.A.”

An active partner with the California Native Plant Society, RSABG displays about 2,000 taxa of California plants and has several conservation programs, including one of the largest herbariums in the U.S., an extensive seed conservation program and a living collection that includes tens of thousands of plants.

RSABG has been affiliated with The Claremont Colleges since 1951 when the Garden operation was moved to Claremont from Santa Ana. Claremont Graduate University’s Botany Program is based at the Garden.

The Rare Plant Treasure Hunt is a citizen science project of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) funded in part by grants from National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Bureau of Land Management.

Teams of botanists and amateur plant detectives venture out into public lands across the state to record rare plant occurrences.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden faculty and research scientists are a jet setting crew. Frequently on the go, RSABG botanists travel around the world for field research and to collaborate with fellow researchers. Here's a run down of recent trips by three research scientists.

The research undertaken by the majority of our graduate students involves field and lab work. Fieldwork can be expensive, especially when foreign travel is involved. Some laboratory research is inexpensive (e.g., gathering data on the anatomical structures of plants), but other aspects of lab work, most notably gathering DNA data is costly. For these reasons, as well as acquiring grant writing skills can be an essential part of graduate education.

Naomi Fraga, Ph.D. candidate in the Botany Department at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG) and Claremont Graduate University, has been awarded a Switzer Environmental Fellowship. Each scholar receives $15,000 to help with the expenses related to completing their masters or doctor degrees. This year, only 21 fellowships were awarded to emerging environmental leaders who are currently pursuing advance degrees that will enable them to address critical environmental challenges.

Rare botanical artwork squirreled away among the pressed plant specimens in the herbarium and the library’s special collections at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG) is scheduled for debut as part of a temporary art instillation at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in 2013. The exhibition, under a propitious motif titled “When They Were Wild: Capturing California’s Wildflower Heritage,” is a result of a collaborative effort between RSABG, The Huntington and the Theodore Payne Foundation.

Last year the RSABG herbarium was awarded an NSF grant to process the backlog of unaccessioned specimens from Professor Robert Thorne’s botanical collecting around the world.

Thorne, emeritus curator and professor, retired after a distinguished career at RSABG. The specimens in question have been held at an off-site storage facility; they urgently need to be processed and placed in the herbarium to be properly cared for and, as importantly, to be available for researchers to study. As of this year 4,000 of an estimated total of 10,000 specimens have been prepped and are ready to be mounted.

Professor Linda Prince’s research examines two very different groups of flowering plants—members of the dicot tea family (Theaceae), and two families of the monocot ginger order: the prayer plant family (Marantaceae), and canna lilies (Cannaceae)—to further understand phylogenetic framework, to clarify evolutionary relationships among plant groups.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden is pleased to welcome visiting sabbatical professors Carolyn Ferguson and Mark Mayfield, both from Kansas State University and Carlos García-Verdugo de Lucas, Fulbright postdoctoral researcher for the spring of 2011.

Carolyn Ferguson, associate professor of biology at Kansas State University and curator of the KSU Herbarium, studies Phlox, a genus of about 70 species of plants found mostly in North America.

Researching a diverse and widespread plant family, scientists at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and visiting scientists from Ethiopia are delving into the importance of biodiversity.

Erin Tripp, principal investigator and post-doctoral researcher at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG), along with co-principal investigator Lucinda McDade, Judith B. Friend Director of Research at RSABG, are reconstructing the phylogenetic tree (family tree) of the plant lineage Ruellieae to further scientific understanding of the diversity of life.

Three horticultural experts, educators and designers offer a might tome full of turf grass alternatives.

With more than 300 color images, the second collaboration of Carol Bornstein, David Fross and Bart O’Brien offer oodles of design inspiration, detailed plant profiles of water-conserving plants from around the world and practical solutions for home gardeners.

The authors will be at the Garden on Sunday, April 17, 1 p.m., for a special presentation and book signing for “Reimagining the California Lawn” (Cachuma Press, March 2011). Refreshments will be provided. The book will be for sale at the California Garden Shop at RSABG. This event is free; no Garden admission necessary for book-signing attendees.

Bornstein, Fross and O’Brien collaborated on “California Native Plants for the Garden,” published by Cachuma Press in 2005.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden was recognized as a Claremont Unified School District partner at a recent Board of Education meeting on Thursday, May 5, 2011.

The presentation from the school board at a regularly schedule board meeting recognized the outstanding educational opportunities provided by the District’s partnership with Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and for the ongoing commitment to Claremont students, faculty and staff.

J. Travis Columbus has been promoted to professor of botany at the Claremont Graduate University [CGU]. Columbus has been a member of the CGU faculty and, cointerminous with this appointment, is a research scientist at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. The CGU Botany Department has long been coordinated and run by RSABG. The program offers M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in evolutionary and systematic botany.

Columbus received his doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and is an expert on the systematics of chloridoid grasses. He spent this past spring in the field making collections of his study plants in South Africa and Tanzania.

An Ahmanson Foundation grant will help grow horticultural occupational training for veterans and helps support efforts to promote the benefits of growing native California plants to home owners and professional landscapers at Grow Native Nursery Westwood.

As Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG) continues to grow as a leading native plant, ethnobotany and natural history of California resource for educators, k-12 students and families, the BCM Foundation awarded RSABG a $35,000 grant to strengthen and expand environmental education offerings.

“This grant underscores a growing need for environmental education among our state’s schools that would otherwise be unable to afford quality programming,” said Eric Garton, RSABG director of visitor services. “And the children we serve because of this funding stand a far greater chance of being inspired and compelled to become the future environmental stewards.”

They met in St. Louis

A large contingent from Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden's research department, including faculty, students and postdoctoral fellows attended the Botany 2011 and conducted presentations on their research findings July 2011. Erin Tripp's took home honors for best contributed paper in plant systematics by a young scientist.

The annual conference, themed ‘Healing the Planet’ for 2011, convened members of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, Botanical Society of America, the Society for Economic Botany and the American Fern Society.

Fay's Wildflower Meadow was completely covered with impermeable plastic sheeting this August as the first step in solarizing the soil. Solarization is a low-cost, non-toxic method for weed control, in which the area is mowed, watered and covered with clear plastic for several months during the summer. The heat of the sun turns the trapped moisture to steam which kills pathogens and weed seeds. This is a great example of using natural processes to maintain a landscape instead of chemicals.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden is a Certified Wildlife Habitat

This won’t come as a surprise if you’ve been to Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, but in August the National Wildlife Federation recognized us as an official Certified Wildlife Habitat site.

From hawks to butterflies, the Garden attracts a multitude of wildlife. Habitats not only nurture year-round resident birds but also provide stopover sites for migratory birds. Biologist Mark Hostetier of the University of Florida says that “urban environments are an important factor in the future conservation of many species. Not only has urban sprawl grown into the paths of stopover sites on bird flyways, but the sheer volume of human development has changed the amount of area available for nesting and overwintering.”

Diana Jolles, doctoral candidate in botany at RSABG, is a recipient of an award from the Northern California Botanists’ 2011–12 Botany Research Scholarship Program. The $1,000 grant will help to support Jolles’ research on the Pyrola picta species complex (Ericaceae), which is well known in Northern California (among other places that it occurs). To learn more about Northern California Botanists and their support of student research, please see the Northern California Botanists website.

Jinyan Guo, a doctoral candidate in the botany program at RSABG, has been selected to receive The Fletcher Jones Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship for the 2011–12 academic year. Funded by The Fletcher Jones Foundation, the grant is awarded each year to one of the students at RSABG who are in their last year of the doctoral degree program and whose research is exemplary in systematic and evolutionary botany. Guo is studying the diversity and evolution of sepal crests on plants in the Iris genus (Iridaceae). These crests are 3D structures that stick up off of the flat surface of the sepals and likely have a role in pollination biology.

Erin Tripp earns George R. Cooley Award

The American Society of Plant Taxonomists awarded Erin Tripp, an expert on wild petunias, their George R. Cooley Award for Best Contributed Paper in Plant Systematics at the society’s annual meeting. During Tripp’s presentation, entitled “Physacanthus (Acanthaceae): a heteroplasmic, intergeneric, interlineage hybrid?”, she marshaled extensive morphological and genetic evidence to present what one award judge described as “the complete story” of a west African plant genus with previously uncertain evolutionary origins.

A Green Yard

When Steve and Paula Albrigo took on relandscaping, their goal was a green yard.

Not the green often used to describe environmentally friendly landscapes(although the results are certainly eco-minded), but to fill their 7,000-square-foot front yard with a mini-forest of native plants—a spectrum of green.

"I wanted people to look at our yard and say that they never imagined a native California landscape could be so green and beautiful,” says Steve Albrigo.

The result is a striking, beautiful domestic space that showcases native plants. The corner lot has been transformed from manicured turf to a carefully crafted woodsy wildscape that reminds the Albrigos of the serene mountain retreats they love.

Fire Follower

By Bart O'Brien

Spectacular and beautiful, this native perennial subshrub can currently be seen in great abundance in the central and western San Gabriel Mountains in the aftermath of the Station Fire. Eriodictyon parryi (formerly Turricula parryi) or the poodle-dog bush is primarily a fire follower—its seeds germinate shortly after wildfires and it may even produce flowers during its first year of growth. However, this short-lived plant is typically most spectacular in its second, third and fourth years, when it reaches its peak in both size and vigor. From late spring through summer, large, showy flower clusters appear and the plants may reach up to 10 feet tall. These are composed of hundreds of lavender to bluish, one-half to three-fourths inch long flowers. Poodle-dog bush is an important plant for erosion control and provides abundant food for native pollinators.

Training people in the elements of eco-friendly landscaping practices with help from a grant.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, in partnership with state, county and city agencies, is conducting a hands-on vocational training program called Water Efficient Landscaping to prepare California parolees and job seekers for sustainable landscaping and horticulture careers.

On October 26, 2011, the Board formally proclaimed the Lenz Sculpture Collection, consisting of all current and future pieces of artwork donated by Lenz, as a tribute to his long-time support of the art collection at RSABG.

The Garden Hosts Workshop to Help Public Garden Professionals Detect Invasive Plants and Pathogens

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG) is hosting the Sentinel Plant Network’s western region workshop to engage public gardens, volunteers and visitors in the early detection of invasive plant pests and pathogens that threaten plant conservation efforts.

The workshop, to be held December 5 and 6, 2011, will bring together a cross section of American Public Gardens Association (APGA) member gardens from across the western U.S.

The Franciscan manzanita, unseen in the wild for eight decades, made headlines around the country when it was found.

by Bart O'Brien

“I garnered it ghoulishly in a gunnysack” said the famous California botanist Lester Rowntree of her late night procurement of one of the last wild specimens of the San Francisco manzanita (Arctostaphylos franciscana) from the Laurel Hill Cemetery in San Francisco in 1947.

Scientists have been conducting research at the Garden since 1930. Today, discoveries in the critical fields of plant systematics and evolution are forging ahead with support from the NSF, other research grants and private contributions from RSABG donors.

by Laura Tiffany

Scientists have been conducting research at the Garden since 1930. Today, discoveries in the critical fields of plant systematics and evolution are forging ahead with support from the NSF, other research grants and private contributions from RSABG donors.

Diana Jolles and Jose Zúñiga, Claremont Graduate University botany doctoral candidates, have both received Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants (DDIG), a highly-competitive grant funded by the National Science Foundation.

Jolles’ DDIG grant supports her travels to the southern- and northern-most edges of the range of Pyrola picta (in the Ericaceae or Heath Family) to observe their natural history and collect specimens between June and August 2012. She will travel to the Sierra San Pedro Mártir in Baja California, the north coast of British Columbia, and the southeastern coast of Alaska. Collections will be used for genetic analyses, detailed morphological study and will be accessioned in the RSABG herbarium.

Field work furthers RSABG scientific and student research

McDade and Kiel in Costa Rica

Lucinda McDade, Judith B. Friend Director of Research and Professor and Chair of the Claremont Graduate University Botany Department at RSABG, and doctoral candidate Carrie Kiel traveled to Costa Rica in January to collect members of Acanthaceae.

J. Travis Columbus, RSABG research scientist and Claremont Graduate University botany professor, and Amanda Ingram, biology professor at Wabash College, chose an excellent year for field research in South Africa and Namibia.

Earlier rains served up a terrific season for regional chloridoid grasses and consequently offered ample successful collecting trips. The three-month trek, with funding from the National Science Foundation, concluded in April 2011 with a visit to the Skeleton Coast of Namibia.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden is hosting the Center for Plant Conservation’s national meeting on April 18-21.

The Center for Plant Conservation (CPC) is a consortium of 36 botanic gardens or plant conservation organizations dedicated to saving plants from extinction in the U.S. Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG) was a charter member of the CPC, which was founded in 1984.

The four-day conference brings together conservation professionals from across the U.S. for workshops, presentations, tours to help conserve rare or endangered flora.

Doctoral candidate Kristen Hasenstab-Lehman recently received a highly competive graduate student research fellowship from the Torrey Botanical Society. The fellowship will support fieldwork for her doctoral dissertation on the genus Varronia and other members of the Boraginaceae (Borage Family). This grant brings the number of RSABG botany students who have received the Torrey Botanical Society prestigious fellowship to four.

Big Bugs was exhibited at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden February through July 2012.

Rogers' playful art installation skews scale and creates an environment that shrinks visitors and enlarges common creatures to uncommon proportions.

Insects are often taken for granted. But these little creatures outnumber us one million to one. Many live in communal groups working as one for the common good. Their ranks include engineers, soldiers, weightlifters, weavers, hunters, stalkers, gatherers and even royalty.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden is proud to be a 2012 endorsing organization for The Mediterranean City conference, to be held in Los Angeles June 25 through 27.

The Mediterranean City: A Conference on Climate Change Adaptation will initiate an ongoing collaboration of cities working together to share ideas, needs and strategies to realistically adapt to the current and future impacts of climate change as they similarly affect the five Mediterranean-climate regions of the world. The conference will bring together an international network of experts from the academic, policy, business, public health and government worlds, and will stand as an example for how cities can work together across regional and national boundaries to bring more resources and knowledge to building solutions.

Michael Wall, seed program conservation program manager at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, has won the 2012 Star Award from the Center for Plant Conservation for his work with rare and imperiled California native plant species.

The award was presented on April 20 in conjunction with the Center for Plant Conservation’s national meeting, held this year at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG). The award recognizes individuals who demonstrate the concern, cooperation and personal investment needed to conserve imperiled native plants.

Be a Champion of California Native Plants and Help Weed Out Invasive Plants

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG) continues to partner with the Angeles National Forest to help eradicate weeds that are popping up and preventing native plant recovery in the wake of the Station Fire.

And you can help, too. Join a crew of staff and volunteers the second and fourth Sunday of each month June through November 2012.

August is the perfect time to prepare your garden for planting California natives this autumn. With a little effort and observation, you can identify the principal variables of light and shade. With this piece of the puzzle along with space requirements and soil conditions, you’ll be prepared to choose the plants that will thrive in your space.

Over the upcoming months, The Buzz will deliver a new installment of “Getting Native” video series with tips for selection, planting and maintenance success of California native plants.

“Light and Shade in the Garden” offers an overview of how to determine sun and shade conditions in your home landscape. Watch the installment here.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and producer Frank Simpson are proud to present this ongoing project to help gardeners bring the beauty and craft of landscaping with California native plants home.

The “Getting Native” website and Facebook page host a growing number of short videos focused on a particular topic. Upcoming videos, already on the video editor’s desk, include demonstrations to help identify soil conditions and weed abatement techniques. Become a fan of Getting Native on Facebook and receive notice when new videos are posted. Visit Getting Native website at www.gettingnative.com or their Facebook page.

Frank Simpson, writer and producer of “Getting Native,” received a degree in horticulture at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin, Ireland, and degrees in landscape architecture from CSU Pomona.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden always has a ‘bumper crop’ of interns during the summer. The internship program is another way in which the organization furthers botany education. RSABG interns receive hands-on training as plant scientists.

Our interns come to us from a variety of sources

Multicultural Undergraduate Internship Program is a Getty Foundation initiative that supports internship opportunities for students at Los Angeles area museums and visual art organizations. Lisa Gluckstein, RSABG’s 2011 Getty Foundation Multicultural Undergraduate Intern, will be helping to archive the Marcus Jones collection.

The Chicago Botanic Garden’s Conservation Land Management Program has placed interns Christi Gabriel, Stephanie Rockwood and Lindsey Ward to help with RSABG’s herbarium and conservation botany programs.

California State University, San Bernardino, through a U.S. Department of Agriculture training grant has placed Terry Higgins and Christopher Galley at RSABG.

Pamela Luncz, a plant science major at Cal Poly Pomona, is interning with RSABG Horticulture helping with grounds, nursery and plant inventory operations.

The Research Department currently holds 11 National Science Foundation grants.

Champagne was popped to celebrate the most recent National Science Foundation grant recipients—J. Mark Porter and Jeffery J. Morawetz.

J. Mark Porter, CGU associate professor of botany and RSABG research scientist, has been awarded a three-year grant to study the plant genus Loeselia that is a member of the Phlox family (Polemoniaceae). This funding, among other endeavors, will support Porter’s fieldwork in areas where this genus occurs in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama. With this extensive sampling, supplemented with collections made by a Colombian colleague, Porter will be able to help clarify the relationships within this fascinating genus.

Jeffery J. Morawetz, The Fletcher Jones Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at RSABG, and colleague Christopher Randle at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX, also received a three-year grant for their proposal “Systematic Investigation of Tropical Diversity in Orobanchaceae.” Morawetz and Randle are investigating the evolution of parasitism, and biodiversity, within the poorly known and understudied tropical lineage of the broomrape family. Their fieldwork will take them to four continents—North and South America (Mexico and Brazil), Asia (China) and Africa (Kenya and Madagascar).